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Monday, July 21, 2008

Earlier this year I got pretty despondent about my thesis. I had been through a few different topics and nothing was coming through. It didn't help that I've been hoping beyond hope to graduate in two years and equally antsy to move to a new and exciting place--preferably Samoa.

Finally, with the help of my thesis chair, or advising professor, I got a good topic: the teens on a treadmill study. On the day of my thesis proposal I wrote, "Now we need to figure out all the logistics of bringing in over a hundred teenagers to test their cardiorespiratory fitness levels."

Those logistics have proved much more difficult than we could have imagined. We felt pretty confident that ~4,500 flyers in staff and faculty mailboxes would result in sufficient subjects. But we may have gotten 15. Now we've started recruiting through local sports teams. Still the response has been meager.

In total, I need to do almost 160 tests to have sufficient data. If the kids came at a rate of a mere 10 per day I would be finished in 16 days! But since they haven't come in as expected I'll be tacking on an extra semester--15 weeks--to make up the difference. That is, if the local kids are any more willing to help out during the school year than they have been during their summer vacation.

I have a friend, currently pursuing his PhD, who once mentioned that he spent a lot of time playing Insaniquarium during his Master's degree. I'm beginning to see why that might have been. I haven't yet picked up video gaming to pass the time: Blogs and books still do a good job at captivating my attention. But should they ever lose their appeal...I'll begin a search for a taco like the one in the commercial below. That ought to keep me satisfied for a while.